Amidst a pollution crisis sparked by rampant use of substandard fuels and poor industrial infrastructure, Iran’s government has found a new scapegoat for Tehran’s toxic air: the June 2025 conflict with Israel.
On July 13, 2025, Iran’s Department of Environment claimed that Israeli airstrikes on two fuel depots in Tehran on June 15 released “47,000 tons of greenhouse gases” and that this was responsible for the capital’s air pollution crisis.
But the science does not add up.
Iran emits over 800 million tons of carbon dioxide annually from fossil fuels, making it the sixth-largest emitter globally.
Pollution from a fuel depot explosion might linger for a few days, possibly a week in extreme cases, but not a full month. More importantly, Iran is among the world’s top polluters. According to the Global Carbon Project and BP’s energy data, Iran emits over 800 million tons of carbon dioxide annually from fossil fuels, making it the sixth-largest emitter globally. To put that in perspective, the government’s cited 47,000 tons represents less than one-thousandth of Iran’s monthly emissions of perhaps 67 million tons.
What is worse, a significant portion of these emissions is concentrated in Tehran. The capital alone consumes over 20 percent of the country’s gasoline. According to a confidential report by Iran’s Oil Ministry, obtained by Iran Open Data, none of Iran’s refineries produces fuel that meets international standards.
The report reveals a sharp rise in the use of toxic additives such as methyl tertiary butyl ether, a compound banned in many Western countries, to boost gasoline octane levels. In fact, methyl tertiary butyl ether usage in Iran has quadrupled in the past four years.
The result? According to Tehran’s Air Quality Control Organization, the capital had only ten clean air days in 2023, and just seven days in 2024. With fuel consumption on the rise, experts have predicted 2025 will be worse.
The Oil Ministry’s internal data also show that Iran’s use of mazut—a highly polluting heavy fuel oil banned in marine shipping because of its high sulfur content—has increased sixfold in recent years. Iranian mazut contains over 3.5 percent sulfur, well above international limits.
Meanwhile, daily consumption of non-standard diesel fuel has hit 125 million liters—equal to daily gasoline consumption and three times the country’s mazut usage.
This dire energy landscape is compounded by Iran’s near-total neglect of clean energy. BP’s latest data put the combined share of renewables and nuclear in Iran’s total energy supply at just 0.7 percent, rising to 1.5 percent if hydrogen is included. That means 98.5 percent of Iran’s energy comes from fossil fuels.
By comparison, fossil fuel use in Turkey—a country with three times the gross domestic product of Iran—is less than half of Iran’s, with a much higher share of clean energy.
Iran’s environmental agency also claimed that the Israeli airstrikes generated over 150,000 tons of dust particles, contributing to dangerous particulate matter levels.
Weeks have passed since the [Israeli] strikes, and any dust generated would have dissipated.
This assertion is implausible. Weeks have passed since the strikes, and any dust generated would have dissipated. More importantly, Tehran’s dust problem is chronic and systemic, not tied to any single event. Official data point to soil degradation, the drying of wetlands, and the encroachment of desertification from central Iran as the primary causes of worsening dust storms.
Iran’s own officials admit this. The head of the Soil and Water Office at the Department of Environment has said that soil erosion in Iran is five times the global average, due to unchecked dam-building and prolonged droughts. Nearly half of Iran’s wetlands have dried up in the past two decades.
One emblematic case is Lake Urmia, once the largest saltwater lake in the Middle East and the sixth largest in the world. It has shrunk by 95 percent, becoming a source of salt storms and the destruction of local agriculture. According to the Environment Department, Iran loses one million hectares of land to desertification each year.
Blaming Israel may be part of the Iranian government’s algorithm, but the Iranian people do not buy it, nor do the facts back up the regime’s accusations. Rather, Tehran’s attempt to foist responsibility for its environmental problems onto Israel only highlights the regime’s lack of seriousness, if not policy bankruptcy.
